


Evil, Rearranged

by Cherry



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Even the bad guys are never all bad, Exploring possible Levi backstories, Gen, Origins fic, Spoilers for manga 56
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 21:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1525757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherry/pseuds/Cherry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One possible Levi origins story. Spoilers for manga 56.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evil, Rearranged

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not read if you don't want spoilers for chapter 56 of the manga. 
> 
> I'm working on my other fics - and thank you so much for all the encouragement, everyone who had left kudos or comments. After reading chapter 56 I had so many ideas about what Levi's backstory could possibly be, that I wanted to write at least one of them before the next chapter of the manga comes out. I may continue this in the future, by which time it will have been proven wrong in canon. If I do, it will probably morph into Eruri eventually. 
> 
> If any one wants to talk Levi meta, I'm always up for that!

“Who the hell is that, at this hour?” the gatekeeper wondered aloud.

“Whoever he is, he’ll wish he wasn’t, if he wakes the captain after last night,” the guardsman grumbled, shouldering his rifle just in case. “Better get that quick, Hoffmann.”

“All right, all right, I’m coming!” Hoffman called, stomping over to the heavy wooden door and sliding back the metal grille. “Where’s the fucking fire?”

He peered out into the street. The lamplight gleamed on the rain-slick cobblestones and illuminated the thin, hard face of a woman in a low-cut gown, who was probably younger than she looked.

“What do you want?” Hoffman asked.

“Delivery for Lieutenant Ackerman,” the woman replied, unsmiling, holding up what appeared to be a loose bundle of grey rags. “He’s one of yours, ain’t he?”

“Some of that clan here, yes,” Hoffman nodded. “And we do have a Lieutenant Ackerman. What kind of delivery?”

The woman shrugged. “It’s wrapped up. I’m doing a favour for a – a friend.”

“Tell her we’ll have to inspect it,” the guardsman muttered, close to Hoffman’s ear. “We have enemies…”

“Put it on the ground, and step back,” Hoffmann ordered.

“Whatever you say.” The woman looked up at him, her expression scornful and undaunted. She placed the bundle on the ground in front of the door and took half a dozen steps backwards.

Hoffman lifted the heavy bar, shot the bolts, and opened the door. Behind him, the guardsman held his rifle ready as Hoffman ventured out into the street, which was silent apart from the repetitive patter of the rain.

“Its mother died birthing it,” the woman called, pulling her shawl around her, and taking another step back as Hoffman bent to poke cautiously at the bundle. “She swore blind it was Ackerman’s though. Her last word was _Levi_ – maybe that’s the name she wanted for it. Any rate – she’s dead, and the brat’s like to be.”

Hoffman pushed aside the thin rags, to uncover the pale, pinched face of a newborn baby, a smear of blood on its forehead. He stared at the child, unsure what to do, then looked up sharply at the sound of the woman’s clogs clacking on the cobbles.

“Wait!” Hoffmann cried, but the woman ran off into the darkness and the rain without a backward glance.

“What the hell?” the guardsman said, lowering his rifle. “What are we supposed to do with that?”

Hoffmann picked up the baby gingerly. “Weighs next to nothing. Is it even breathing?”

“None of our business,” the guardsman said. “I’ll fetch Ackerman.”

“What’s Lieutenant Ackerman going to do with a baby?” Hoffmann asked.

“Most likely slit its throat. Not our concern.”

“What the fuck was all that banging?”

The gatekeeper and the guard spuna to face the speaker, then instantly drew themselves to attention.

“Captain Harper, Sir! Some bitch – whore by her dress – left this.” Hoffmann held out the baby. “Said its mother died, and swore it was Ackerman’s - _Lieutenant_ Ackerman’s.”

The Captain’s eyes flicked to the guardsman. “Fetch Ackerman.” He leaned forward and peered at the baby in Hoffmann’s arm, letting out a harsh bark of laughter. “Shit – it’s ugly enough to be Ackerman’s! And it’s a runt. Small even for a newborn. Don’t fancy its chances.”

Lieutenant Ackerman had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe as he entered the room. He frowned, raking long-boned fingers through his dark hair, looking from the baby in Hoffmann’s arms to Captain Harper. “Sir?”

“Some whore left this with us. The mother died giving birth to it, and swore it was yours. Is that possible?”

Ackerman glanced at the baby, then at the captain, who was watching him with an expression that was at once darkly amused, and challenging.

“It’s possible,” Ackerman shrugged, unapologetic. “There was a girl, long enough back. But a whore’s brat could be anyone’s.”

The captain nodded. “Take it. Have a good look. If it’s your get, it could be of use.”

Lieutenant Ackerman took the infant with ungentle hands. The baby began to cry. Ackerman made a face. “Sounds like a kicked cat.”

The captain grinned. “Don’t like you much, does he?”

Ackerman looked up. “It’s a boy?”

“Whore said the mother called it Levi,” Hoffmann commented.

“Huh. I could train a boy.” Ackerman pulled back the rags to reveal a pale, scrawny body. The cord had been cut, and tied with a torn strip of cloth. Exposed to the cold air, the baby kicked with surprising vigour.

The captain laughed. “Maybe it _is_ yours, Ackerman.”

“Can’t tell the eye colour yet. Could be mine. Very small, but he seems strong.”

“Make up your mind. I’m going back to bed. If you want to keep it, you pay for a wet nurse and lodging until the brat’s old enough to start training. If you don’t want it, dispose of it. Or you could do it the old way.” The challenge was back in the captain’s eyes. Ackerman recognised that he was being tested.

“The old way?”

“Exposure. If he survives the night, the odds are he’s your blood. If not – problem solved. Unless you have some kind of attachment to the brat – or its poor dead mother?”

Ackerman met the captain’s eyes, and shook his head once. “No attachment. That was the old way?”

“In my father’s day every child born within the clan was tested in that way. We don’t raise weaklings.”

Ackerman looked at the baby, who had stopped crying and appeared to be gazing at him out of solemn eyes.

“All right. Where?”

“On the roof of the tower. You take it up there now, and fetch it at dawn.”

“Right.”

“I’ll bet twenty guilders it dies,” the captain said. “Looks too small to make it.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Ackerman replied. “I think he’s stronger than he looks. You didn’t feel that kick.”

 

The night was mild for December, and the rain turned to a fine drizzle as Ackerman climbed the spiral stairs to the top of the watch tower, followed by the guardsman, who had been ordered to bolt the trap door and not let anyone onto the roof until dawn.

On top of the tower, Ackerman hesitated, surprised at himself – at the sudden instinct he felt to lay the child as close as possible to the protective shelter of the crenelated wall – at his reluctance to leave the baby alone. But the guard was watching, and there was no place for shows of sympathy in the life of an agent of the Central Military Police. Ackerman strode to the centre of the tower and placed the child on the flagstones, nothing between it and the cold stone but the thin rags it was wrapped in. As he laid the baby down, he was forced to cup its small head in his hand to prevent its neck from snapping back. The sparse black hair covering the infant’s crown was very soft against his palm.

“Live, Levi!” he murmured. Then, conscious of the guard’s eyes on him, he gave a mirthless smile and added, “I have twenty guilders riding on you!”   

 

Lieutenant Ackerman had never been a man to let sentiment get in the way of duty. He had been promoted after a clean-up operation demanding the disposal of a young couple who had been caught printing copies of some potentially incendiary pages from a forbidden history book, giving away details of the world that had existed before the building of the walls. His two fellow squad members had baulked at killing the woman, but Ackerman saw no difference between the genders when it came to the need to silence troublemakers. Both parties had been well aware that their actions were illegal. The captain had noted Ackerman’s dispassionate efficiency and had made him a lieutenant shortly afterwards.

The world was cruel – that much Ackerman had always known. Nature provided nothing but a stark choice between death and survival, and the survival of humanity depended upon keeping it within the walls. Let those suicidal bastards in the Survey Corps throw themselves into the maws of titans if they wished – they served as a warning to others, and effectively became their own executioners. Anyone else who broke the rules had to be silenced – it was the only way to maintain the necessary status quo. Those who served that purpose were selected from a small number of clan families, all of which had been chosen for their specific strengths and skills. The Ackerman clan had a tendency to unusual physical strength and agility, as well as the mental determination to survive at all costs.

Ackerman stretched out on his narrow bunk and closed his eyes. If the brat were truly of clan blood, it would survive. If not – the winter night would be kinder to it than the inevitable life of poverty and disease that was the common lot of a whore’s child. No need to think of it until morning.

And yet, Ackerman found that sleep eluded him, as he lay in the dark and wondered whether he was imagining the faint sounds of a baby’s cry, carried on the wind.

He forced himself to lie in bed for half an hour after daybreak, so that no one would be able to accuse him of too close an interest in the child. Passing the kitchens on his way to the tower stairs, he stopped to take a warm bread roll from the basket on the table, making a show of eating it with apparent satisfaction before making his way up to the roof to discover the fate of the baby.

Of course it would be dead, he considered, as he rounded the last turn of the stairs and met the guard sitting on the steps just below the closed trap door. The weather had been warm for December, but surely it was still too cold for such a pathetic scrap of humanity to survive?

“Let’s see whether I’m up or down twenty guilders,” Ackerman said to the guard, who shook his head.

“Down, I’d bet. It was yelling its lungs out until around three, then nothing.”

Ackerman nodded, hiding the unexpectedly sharp stab of dismay he experienced at the news. “Let’s find out then,” he said harshly. “Open the door.”

The guard pushed open the trap door, and climbed through onto the roof, followed by Ackerman.

The rain had stopped, but the stones upon which the unmoving bundle of rags lay were still wet, shining dully in the grey dawn light. Ackerman bent to pull the rags away from the baby’s face. Its eyes were closed, its lips tinged blue. In spite of himself, a sigh escaped Ackerman as he picked up the child.

“Is it dead?” the guard asked.

“Looks like it. Cold as a – oh!” Ackerman gave a surprised start, as the baby wriggled in his arms. Its eyes opened, its brow wrinkled, and it began to howl with what sounded like indignant fury. Ackerman couldn’t help it; he smiled. “Seems the brat’s an Ackerman after all,” he told the astonished guard. “Go and inform Captain Harper that he owes me twenty guilders. And then find me a wet-nurse, and bring her here immediately.”

“But, Sir,” the guard began almost timidly, “where am I supposed to find –”

“That’s your concern. Just do it! We don’t have time for you to stand there dithering - my son is hungry!”

The guard swallowed his objections, and vanished back through the trap door. Ackerman looked down at the baby in his arms. “Levi,” he said. “It’s a good name. Seems you’re a survivor, Levi Ackerman.”


End file.
